Moving Sheds for Dummies

Question: How do you get a shed that was transported about a mile on a small forklift to your front yard, but then sunk as soon as it hit your grass and then had to sit on your driveway for a week into your backyard with the least amount of damage?
Answer: Get a bigger forklift.

Voila: except for a few ruts in the yard and a small broken tree branch, everything made it in the back safe and sound. This is Craig's parents' shed that will hopefully allow them to get 11 kids worth of junk out of their garage into the shed so they can actually use their garage for what it was built for: cars! Guess how much the shed cost them to put together? Almost nothing!! My brother in law, Daniel, was in a construction class at his high school last semester and they do a deal every year where if you pay for the materials, they will build the shed for you. Craig's parents had also earned a fair amount of Home Depot cards from points on their credit card and were able to use that to pay for the materials. They just had to find a way to get it to the backyard. They tried once last weekend and made it with a forklift to our driveway. As soon as it hit the grass, though, it sunk and then the front end of the shed tipped into the ground and lifted the back end of the forklift up, which made it immoveable. So the shed parked it on our driveway for a week. The other night we got another forklift out, this one much larger, that made it into the backyard okay and even missed crushing any sprinklers on the way (this thing weighs 8,000 lbs). The kids watched the whole thing from the dinner table. Chloe started balling uncontrolabley when it got closer and the beeping from backing up got louder. Linus just sort of sat there in awe of it all. Later, after Chloe had calmed down, she told me, "Mom, Yi-yus didn't freakin' out like I did. I freakin' out". That girl makes me giggle.
This week, in other news, Craig got very ill and came home early on Tuesday. We successfully quaranteened him upstairs in our room for the day, reasoning that if the kids got sick, than everyone would get sick, and avoiding getting me sick and stressing my body out any would be a good thing. So Linus and Chloe had their first sleepover at Grandma and Grandpa's house and I slept in Linus's bed since Craig had already regretfully contaminated ours and he'd been running a temperature of about a 103 that evening and I didn't feel comfortable leaving him by himself. The next day he was feeling much better, though, and none of us got sick, so we're celebrating. :-)

Additions

This is one of the kids' favorite passtime. There's enough unevenness on the cement behind the house that when you water it with the hose, it makes a small puddle. They ran back and forth in the puddle for like 15 minutes and then played happily making "puddle soup" with bits of grass and sticks and dandelions and leaves from the yard. Linus thought it would be a good idea to sit back and relax in the puddle at one point, until he quickly realized before I could stop him that his rear was sopping wet as soon as he did it. That was a sad moment in the life of Linus.

We've also had some additions to our household, which I have yet to get some pictures of yet, but they aren't as cute as my kids so it wouldn't be as exciting anyway. :-)
Last Friday night, as I mentioned, Craig went to pick up our car in Utah and it made it's way back into our garage! It's very nice and super easy to drive (for any of you out there conisdering the Honda Pilot, get a decent used one at a good price and they are totally worth it!! So far anyway...). I've driven it once from the grocery store back home and it was just like driving the Accord, smooth as silk. However, currently there is a large shed in our driveway (that's another story for another time) and I'm not comfortable backing the Pilot back into the garage like Craig can, so I don't plan on using it on my own until I have enough space to get to the street from my driveway without crunching the car or the shed.
Secondly, to preface the thirdly, we have a new room in our house! I would go take a picture of the finished product right now, but the guy from our ward who we hired to build it for us is up there fixing a couple of things, so I don't want to bother him. Basically, our "master" bedroom used to be two smaller bedrooms, but some previous tennant took out the wall between the two rooms and made it one long room. While we liked having the extra space in our room, we hardly use it and with the upcoming baby, we didn't want the baby sleeping in our room nor did we think there was really room for all three of our kids to fit in the other bedroom that is upstairs that Chloe and Linus are currently sharing. So we decided to compromise: we put the wall back up in our room to separate the two spaces again, except instead of adding the door back into the hallway, we just put two pocket doors in the middle of the wall so that it still sorta feels like one big room when it's open, but we're putting the baby "nursery" on the other side and when the baby is sleeping, we just shut the pocket doors. This is also leading us to replace the basboards, closets, and doors in our room, take out the popcorn ceilings, and repaint everything upstairs. I'm having trouble knowing where to stop with what we can afford to do, though: if we replace the basboards, we have to do it in the nursery as well as our room, and then...into the hallway and the kids' room...and then down the stairs....and then the living rooms...and then the entire house, right? And then all the doors and window sills and do we want crown molding anywhere else but the bedrooms and do we need to replace the windows and do we need to remodle the kitchen and the fireplace and recarpet and...well it just doesn't end, really, so I'm going to have to draw the line somwhere. We'll just cross that bridge when we get there I guess. For right now, we have a wall with two pocket doors in it. Yay!
Thirdly, in honor of having a real "nursery", Craig picked up some baby furniture at IKEA while he was in Utah. Sort of. We picked out what we wanted from the catalogue before he even left, but then they didn't have exactly what we wanted in stock, and seeing as there is no IKEA in Denver (yet) and shipping would be over $300 to do it online, we needed to get something there.
What we originally wanted was the changing table (pictured below) with two columns on either side that had shelfs and drawers on them with the connecting peg shelf in between the columns above the changing table. But they didn't sell the columns anymore, so we opted for the slightly more expensive matching wardrobes instead, and considered ourselves lucky because now we have extra badly needed storage space for baby/kid stuff. This is what it will sort of look like, except all right next to each other and the shelf connecting the two wardrobes over the changing table.

Patterns

So a lot of people have been asking me if I have patterns for the hats I've made, and I thought I would share what I know.
First of all, the premie hats- yes, I did steal a pattern for these hats because I wasn't sure exactly how small small should be on a premie sized head and I wanted to find someone else who had already tried it. This pattern here for premie hats is VERY simple, and if you are like me and don't know which letters stand for which stitches, just google them and you can figure it out. If you are visual like me, google the stitch under "google images" and you'll find lots of help. Or stop by my house and I'll show you myself. :-)
The other hats I'm sorry to say I don't have a specific pattern for, I sort of just made it up as I went, but followed the same pattern somewhat as the premie hats. For example, the premie hat has you start with six around the middle and for the next 6 rows, you increase 6 stitches each time, each time making your "double" stitch further apart (if you read and understand the pattern, this will make sense)- so by the end of the 6th row, you have 36 stitches and you just continue on with 36 around for 7 more rows (so you end up with 14 rows all together). I applied the same thing for larger hats, except I started with 8 and increased by 8 each time instead of 6. When I felt like the "crown" was big enough for whatever sized head I was doing it for, I would just stick with that number stitches the rest of the way until I thought it would be long enough too. And a word to the wise, the thicker your yarn, the larger your hat will be, even if you do the same pattern with the same sized hook (all of the hats I've done so far is with a size "H" hook and it's worked well to keep a tighter stitch even with thicker yarn).
I have a couple of other patterns I experimented with (aka made up) today that I'm trying in different sizes- for girls. I'll post pictures tomorrow, it's late now and too dark to get a decent shot of one. :-)
Craig is in Utah tonight picking up our car! He'll be back tomorrow in the early afternoon. I can't wait to take a spin in it. I'm kind of nervous to drive a bigger car- I didn't get my license until I got married and have only really driven one car that entire time (which is the Honda Accord we have now). A larger car to me just means I have to be super careful not to hit anything. It's like being pregnant, in a way- you aren't really aware of how big you actually are and keep bumping into things. Except with a car it's just more expensive.
Also- at my appointment with my doctor on Thursday, we went over sort of a lot of stuff. First of all, she told me randomly WAY too much about a sex ed presentation she did at a high school once to help "scare the pants on" the kids. Not only did she scare the pants on me, she scared my kids and future kids out of the public sex ed programs schools offer when they are old enough to be offered to. Her descriptions of the slides were gruesome enough (she's my doctor, somehow I assumed whatever she was saying would be relevant to me eventually, I don't even remember why she brought it up in the first place, but it turns out she apparently just had some time to waste that day...)- I didn't even have to see them to know that I would never want to ACTUALLY see them. Yuck.
When that was done, she moved on to things that were actually relevant to me. My cervix, as previously mentioned, is longer again, which she was excited about, but I'm starting to funnel a little bit. Funneling is when the cervix starts to peel open from the inside and makes sort of a V shape when fluid starts to enter into the open part. Except mine wasn't V shaped, it was U shaped, which apparently is odd. She decided that it was probably the clot pushing it's way in there and that's why it was more of a U instead of a V, because if it were fluid, it would be a V. So, as usual with my appointments, a little up and a little down. She decided that I didn't need to do weekly ultrasounds anymore- in fact, so far all the ultrasounds have done for us on a weekly basis is make us worried over nothing. "Oh dear! My cervix is short! But...I didn't go into labor...and look, it's lengthened out again, great!! Oh wait...no, no it's short again!! Aaaannnnd...I didn't go into labor...and it lengthened out again, fantastic!! Oh poo, it's shorter again!" and so on, and this all while I'm on bed rest, so obviously anything I'm doing is not making it worse or better. Instead, I will just have a check up with Dr. B every two weeks with no ultrasound. Basically the only time we need to worry is if I'm showing real labor symptoms (spotting, bleeding, broken water, lots of rhythmic, hard contractions, etc...), and knowing I have a short cervix, since I've been so up and down, shouldn't be a reason to worry. I'll still do the monthly growth measurements for the baby until it's born, but other than that, I think my ultrasound picture collection is going to dwindle for a while (I have probably close to 50 or so pictures already, maybe more, they give me a few each time I get an ultrasound).
I think I've been doing really good with this bed rest thing- I have my moments where I just want to say "really? I don't feel like this is necessary", especially when I miss out on things that I love to do and think too much about the things I want to do this summer and probably won't be able to (swimming, going to the zoo, driving my kids to Denver to see my parents, visiting the Children's Museum, just getting out and going places we've never gone to before). And to be honest I think the most frustrating thing is that everyone else thinks I need to be more careful all the time, and then I sort of feel like a jerk if I ever try to convince them that whatever I'm doing is okay- as though I'm convincing them that it's really okay to put my baby at risk, it's no big deal. Especially when I know that my being careful means inconveniencing someone else to do said activity for me. But I just think that the point is that when it's all over, I'll be glad I did it. And I find ways to occupy myself in a safe way- truth be told I've always favored quite, low key activities (like crocheting, ha ha) over bigger ones anyways. For so long anyways...
Okay, now I'm just stalling because it's late and Craig's gone so I've got the house to myself and I hate going to bed alone (did it for 19 years without him, don't know why it's a problem now but it is!!) Night!

Bubbles and Hats

Linus got a "bubble train" for his birthday and here are some of our bubble adventures. The bubble lawn mower has a hard time getting the bubbles out, so we've just been using the train so far. They tend to make a mess with it by the end because they figured out that when they put their hands right up to the spout, they don't have to chase the bubbles, they just pop right on their hands. And that my friends is why they make bubbles non-toxic...







Here are some more of my creations- I'm totally hooked now (err....no pun intended...) and everyday I make something with yarn. I even got my sister-in-law into it when I showed her how to make the premie sized ones. I'm getting a lot better at switching colors, so I'm going to break into my bins upstairs to create all sorts of colors. Call me weird...and also ungrateful...but I really didn't like the selection of hats to choose from at the hospital when our kids were born- they were all neutral, and sometimes I think people deem something as cute just because it's baby colored yarn. But we all have different tastes, so now moms at the hospital can have some of my tastes to choose from. :-)

This is a premie sized hat next to a toddler sized one I made for Chloe. You can really see the difference in size! Chloe likes to put the premie ones on her baby doll because they fit so well- hard to imagine that babies come out that size sometimes...


Girls hats, all premie

A boy premie beanie
Chloe modeling her hat. I have to make Linus one now because he keeps wanting to wear hers...


Also- had my ultrasound today and my cervix is at a steadier 3.1-3.4 cm. The ultrasound tech (I really need to get her name, I see her every week and she's really sweet) was thrilled that it wasn't in the 2 range again, so I left feeling good this time instead of apprehensive. I couldn't schedule my appointment and ultrasound on the same day this week, so tomorrow I see Dr. B for my regular (ha ha..."regular"....) appointment. Also- I mentioned today that this was the farthest I've seen any of my kids on an ultrasound and the tech said that the peri-natal doctor I saw in Denver wants growth charts on a monthly basis and that they would do some 3D ultrasounds for some of those ones as I get further along. Those always look kinda weird to me, but I admit I'm excited to see what my own baby looks like in the golden glow of a 3D ultrasound...

BIRT-DAY CAKE! BIRT-DAY CAKE!

Linus turned two yesterday, and from the minute I finished his cake in the afternoon, he couldn't keep his eyes off of it. I had to convince him it was "yucky" for a while so he wouldn't touch it. Luckily he forgot about that before he actually started eating it. :-) This was the most three dimensional cake I have yet created. Craig and I got into a heated argument Friday night because Craig insisted that I just do the train and not the sheet cake underneath, but I really didn't want to frost 10 different cars so there would be enough for everyone. We ended up probably having too much cake, as Craig predicted, but I'm a woman, and I admittedly like the aesthetics more than the practicality.




Eating with a fork is LAME-O.
See?!I kept trying to ask Linus how old he was so he could tell me, but Chloe was always around each time I did and before Linus could even think about it she would shout out "TWO!! Mommy, Yiyus is TWO today!!" Actually I think she may have been more excited about his birthday than he was, as evidence by her gigantic meltdown when he finished opening his presents and wanted to play with the toys that Chloe wanted to check out. I've had to explain to her several times since that they are his birthday toys and not hers. Linus did fantastic the entire night, and didn't even get too cranky or tired by the end of it all. We had the whole family out and ate hot dogs and hamburgers and jell-o and of course, watched his "year two" slideshow. I'm having difficulty posting it here- it's just taking forever, so I may have to try it another time.

He got some fun toys to play with too- finally he's got some more "boyish" toys- like matchbox cars, large plastic dinosaurs, a basketball hoop, and one of those cars that you shake up and the more you shake it, the further it goes when you put it down on the ground. Plus some very handsome clothes, that he didn't really get. He kept pulling them out of the bag and tossing them like they were part of the wrapping and was all confused when there were no toys to be found. Both sets of grandparents got him a "bubble" toy- he got an electric train that blows bubbles out the top and a lawn mower that blows bubbles when you walk with it. We tried the train inside until our floor started getting too slippery, so we'll have to save them for outside this week. The kids loved it, though. All in all we thought it all went swimmingly and now Chloe's been asking us every minute how much longer it's going to be until her birthday...here we go...
Got extra cake for anyone who wants some, come on over! :-)

Short n' Sweet

I went to see Dr. K at the Swedish Medical Center in Denver yesterday, which yielded these results:

• Having the LONGEST ultrasound I've ever had (explained below)- Craig and I were so cozy in the warm room and low lights that we about fell asleep before we were done (the tech wasn't very talkative after the preliminaries were over).
  
• My cervix is back to about 3 cm at it's shortest (yay!), the fluid in my endocervical canal is normal (I think, at least that is the impression I got), when pressure is put on my abdomen, the cervix doesn't open up at all from the inside, and I'm not dialating at all (all good things).
  
• The mystery cysts on my umbilical chord/placenta are mysterious indeed. That is what took so long during the ultrasound, they looked at those things from every which angle and hmmed and huh-ed their way through it. Is it related to the clot? Who knows. Are they a threat to the baby? Not really, the cord is in good shape, baby is getting all the blood flow it needs, and aside from there being a blood vessel wrapped around one of them, they seem to just exist. They are benign, there's no blood going through them at all, they are just fluid filled. I was instructed to have Dr. B back home write them a report on what they are when I deliver. All these uninvited guests sharing space with the baby! Really, quite rude.
  
• Dr. K said things look good as to be expected, and even suggested a little wiggle room in my bed rest. Admittedly, I haven't been lying down 24-7, but I'm hardly ever on my feet all day- she said that normal activities, watered down quite a bit, are probably fine, still no heavy lifting at all, and resting when I can. Just to test the water, I asked if it would be okay, to say, take a walk around the block now and again- she said "Yeah, that's probably fine, especially if it's good for your mental health". However, she said a few times in our conversation together "But if whatever you're doing makes you start to spot, then stop doing it." "So..." I replied finally, "Do I still need to call the doctor if I start spotting?" "Oh yes, definitely, spotting is very serious". Not that I necessarily want to be contained in the walls of my home all day every day, but I know that spotting is serious, and I thought the point was to sort of prevent that from happening, period, not to try to test and see how far I can go before it happens and then stop.
  
• Cerclage (the stitch in the cervix we were coming to inquire about in the first place)? Absolutely not. Craig and I sort of both knew this going into it, but Dr. B seemed to want to play it safe. I'm too far along, there is risk of infection, not to mention breaking my water, I have no history of pre-term birth before, and if I were to go into labor early, the stitch would complicate things for obvious reasons. From what I had read of it, cerclages are only performed for women who have a repeat history of an incompetant cervix or preterm delivery, and usually aren't performed after 24 weeks anyway (I'm at 25 weeks). It was sort of relieving to hear that, though, just because I had heard of cerclages being performed in those extreme circumstances and the fact that Dr. B wanted me to look at getting one done made me nervous that this pregnancy was in real threat of delivery and soon. Apparently that's not the case, so that is good news.
• My contractions are most likely because, as I've heard so often, the clot is irritating my uterus. Point of the story: I know what it's like to be in labor and I'll know if I'm going into labor. Otherwise I'm going to count them, yes, call if I need to, yes, but not go back to the hospital about it unless it's the real deal. I've decided that. No one can stop me. :-)
  

What Craig and I took from the experience: when I heard the word "wiggle room" I immediately started thinking about all the things I could start doing now and Craig was immediately reminding me that this doctor has seen me once and aside from my oral account of my pregnancy history, doesn't know as much about me as Dr. B does. The point of the matter is this, and I heard this explicately from both Dr. B and Dr. K: there is NO data that says that bed rest in this circumstance works or doesn't work, but doctors usually perscribe it out of caution. With the blood clot still in my uterus, there could even be a threat of it lodging somewhere else in my body if I was lying down all day every day for too long, like my lungs, and that would be really bad. But it's not the kind of thing where you can take X amount of pregnant women in high risk pregnancies and say "This half do bed rest" and "This half don't do bed rest" and then moniter the results because it's too risky for the mothers and the babies to ever do a study on it. So am I going to do everything I can to keep this baby cooking for as long as possible? Of course. That is my priority. So until I hear from Dr. B that I don't need to, I'm going to still take it easy. But does that mean I'm going to stare out the window longingly at Chloe and Linus while they play outside and I sit on my rear and crochet or stare into space? No way. I'm going to sit outside in the sun and let the gifted dandelions from my kids pile on my lap and let them come to me and give them hugs and kisses when they fall down, because my whole family still needs me, even in small ways. And I am confident that I can do small things right now. :-)
In other news, I will be home for Linus's birthday on Saturday! I was secretly terrified that something was going to happen this week, whether at the hospital or in Denver or at any point in any day that would send me to a hospitalized bed rest and I would miss it. So unless my water breaks, pretty much, I'll be here for it. And today will be spent finalizing his slideshow (I'll post it here when I can, but the world premiere is Sat. night, so I can't be pirating it online just yet...).
Also, here are a few pictures of my creations the last few days:The blue and white hats are premie sized, using a half double crochet (SUPER easy to make), and the striped one is more of a small newborn sized, but I started a striped one premie sized last night before we finished watching Newsies. :-) I'm using up all this yarn and the rest of the large tub of yarn I have under my bed to just pump out a ton of these- I think I'm going to see if the Young Women in our ward want to come for an activity and make a bunch that we can donate to the hospital.


These ones were my experiements, and I'm fairly sure I didn't do them right anyway because I think the back half has to be a bit longer than the front, and these are more of like 3-6 month sized hats anyway. The best one that came out was the blue one, the other two you can see noticable flaws if you examine it closely.
HEY! I actually posted something crafty! Wow...that feels good...
Um, and incase you didn't catch on, this post isn't really that short and sweet...

Grumble

So I got a quick stay in the hospital today! Even got a nice jug of water and a Naked Juice to make my stay more comfortable.
I called this morning to my doctor because I had been having more frequent contractions the last couple of days that felt a lot more distinguishable than before- not painful, but like a good couple of "oooh- yes, okay, this is a contraction" contractions. I'd get three in an hour and I'd think...okay, when the next one comes I'm calling, and then of course I wouldn't get another one. A few hours later it would start up again. So I decided that this morning I would go ahead and just ask Dr. B about it. I called and told the lady at the front desk that I had a couple of questions about some contractions I'd been having and if I could talk to Dr. B or her nurse. Dr. B and her nurse are not in today, so she said she was going to put me through to a triage (is that how you spell triage?) nurse. I should have just hung up the phone then, but instead I had to boil the last three months down to a five minute phone explanation of why I was having contractions, and then said that I wasn't really having them now, so I could just wait to talk to Dr. B later- but I said the "contraction" word, and so of course she wanted me to come in and see the Dr. on call. She wanted me to come to the Loveland clinic, so I thought "Well, if my cervix is getting shorter for any reason, I may as well get checked out just to be safe". 20 min. later I get a call as I was getting ready to leave from the same nurse asking me if I could come to the Ft. Collins clinic instead. I told them Loveland was closer, but I could come to Ft. Collins. She explained that if my cervix was getting smaller, that they would like me in Ft. Collins so they wouldn't have to send an ambulance over if they had to admit me. An ambulance? Okay, yes, I'll drive to Ft. Collins. She briefly talked to someone else for a moment and then came back and said "nevermind, just go straight to the birthing center at Poudre Valley Hospital on the third floor, they will take care of you there." The hospital?! Come now, is that really necessary? Apparently yes when you use the words "high risk" and "contractions" in the same sentance to someone other than your doctor. So I drive out there, get completely lost in the hospital getting to the birthing center, get completely lost in the birthing center just trying to find a place to check in, and they get me to a room. Like a real room with a bed and TV and everything and the nurse hands me a robe to put on. I just kept feeling stupider and stupider the entire visit- I explained my life story to the next nurse who came in who hooked me up to the contraction monitering thing, even though I said I hadn't had any this morning and I just wanted to ask about the contractions I was having previously. No, I'm not bleeding, no I'm not leaking anything, no I wasn't dialating at my last appointment, no I didn't test positive on the fFN test, no I haven't had any steroids yet, YES, I was just sent here on default because of my "high risk" thing! Three hours later, no contractions at all, the doctor finally sees me, checks my cervix, and sends me on my way.
Lesson learned: hang up the phone next time my doctor's not in.
The good things from this experience:

• I emptied out my change compartment for a homeless man on the corner of Prospect and I-25. Never given money like that to a homeless person, but he gave me a warm smile and thanked me, even though it wasn't a whole lot. Made me not think about myself so much on the way to the hospital.
• The baby seemed to having a ball the whole time we were there- the nurse had to change the position of the fetal monitor twice because it kept moving around so much and she kept losing the heartbeat. She labeled it as being "very active" in her report- you could hear on the moniter everytime it moved- it sort of sounded like a giant windstorm in there with every twist and turn and jab and poke it was making. At least one of us was getting their fun out of the experience!
  
• I mentioned that I'd been crocheting baby hats and was looking to put a bunch together to donate to the hospital to the nurse and she said that they are usually in need of smaller hats for premie babies as well as babies that are born prematurely and don't make it- they still give blankets and hats to those babies too, and they are always too big. My heart swelled in sympathy and I am now going to crank out as many premie sized baby hats as I can- anyone interested in helping let me know!